Gift of Mrs. O.D. Vaughan, 1983
Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario
Gerhard Marcks was born in Berlin in 1889 and apprenticed with the sculptor Richard Scheibe in 1907. Marcks was also an acquaintance of the German-American architect Walter Gropius, whom he met while he was a member of the November Group and The Workers Council for Art.
Marcks then moved to The School of Applied Arts, but with the Nazi occupation, he was fired since his work was deemed "Entartete Kunst" (degenerate art). In 1937, some of his works were included alongside those of other Bauhaus artists, notably Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, in the Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich, which included 740 modern works meant to teach the general public about the “art of decay.” He continued to live in Germany during the occupation, even though he was forbidden to exhibit in any German state-owned museums.
Along with female figures inspired by mythology, Marcks also sculpted animals whose features were inspired by his travels to Greece and antique sculpture. He relocated to Cologne in 1950 after teaching for four years at the State School of Arts in Hamburg, where he continued to explore the medium of sculpture. In "Running Cat", the stylistic influences of antique sculpture are undeniable: in the elongation of the body, perked-up ears and simple facial expression highlighted by the cat's mischievous smile.
